


live your nights like you're going to war

by Dorkangel



Series: little and broken and still good [4]
Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - Gangsters, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Cancer, Cinnamon Roll Nux, Cute Ending, Dysfunctional Family, Everything is Beautiful and Nothing Hurts, F/M, Fix-It, Fluff, Happy Ending, Mentions of Cancer, No Angst, Nux Lives, Team as Family, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-01
Updated: 2015-08-01
Packaged: 2018-04-12 10:37:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4476185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dorkangel/pseuds/Dorkangel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nux has cancer. Two tumours on his right shoulder gnawing into his neck.<br/>Except...<br/>He doesn't anymore. They're gone.<br/>Coma is very happy about this and all, and he totally is not a grumpy old man, but do the kid and his girlfriend really have to celebrate so loudly?</p><p>*</p><p>Apparently the previous work in this series was a little upsetting, so have some happiness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	live your nights like you're going to war

Don't get him wrong, Coma totally isn't one of those grumpy old dudes. He's a cool old dude. A cool old blind dude. Coma is _all for_ crazy kids staying out all night and doing dumb shit, that's what being a teenager/twenty-something/thirty-something/older-than that-and-in-denial is _for_ , man. (Coma fits into the last category.)  
But Jesus H. Christ, do they have to be so effing loud about it when they're partying at- whatever the hell time it is? His watch could tell him, but in order to get his watch up to his ear he'd have move, and his hangover does not like that idea.  
He's pretty sure he's lying on a park bench, actually, if the sensation of slightly damp wood against his cheek is anything to go by, but that's just, like, one of these things, he guesses. Coma is zen like that. He knows what's up, and lying on a park bench is totally not up. It's unimportant in the grand scheme of things.  
Right now, the grand scheme of things is, um...  
"Woohoo!"  
"Yeah!"  
Oh, yeah, those goddamn crazy kids screaming and yelling all the time. Thinking about it, he's probably going to have to sit up to get them to stop. Not cool, man.  
"Would you shut the fuck up?" he calls irritably, swinging himself upright - and, wow, his bones are really not happy with him, plus also he's pretty sure he's wearing a blindfold and some kind of hideously ugly shirt because he let one of the #dumbmotherfuckerdrummers from his band (which is a hashtag for a reason, fucking _drummers_ ) choose what he was going to wear to last night's party - just as the kids stumble to a stop in front of him. If their footsteps are anything to go by there's only two of them, but everything's kind of echoey in his head at the moment, so who knows?  
One of them is giggling, now that he's listening, and it's definitely a male voice too. The other one is just out of breath, and probably female. Maybe giggly guy just proposed.  
"Oh," starts the breathless one. A girl for sure, and quite a nice one too. She could be pretty, but fuck if Coma cares; the one upside to being blind is the lack of choosiness when it comes to dudes and dolls to sleep with. It's a magnet for insecure people to get laid. "Sorry! Did we wake-"  
"Who cares?" yells giggly guy, clearly _far_ too happy about something. Coma scowls.  
"What the fuck is your beef? Can't a dude get some sleep-" on a park bench in the rain at some kind of ridiculous time in the morning "-without you assholes running around?"  
Alright, that's a bit harsh. Come on. He's _not_ a grumpy old dude.  
"We really didn't think anyone would be around here," apologises the girl, with a hard sound like she just smacked her loud boyfriend on the shoulder. "It's just-"  
"I don't have cancer anymore!"  
She laughs delightedly, uncontrollably, and Coma grins back even though he knows his teeth are absolutely gross.  
He knows what that feels like.  
"Dude, congratulations!"  
He throws a hand out in their vague direction - yeah, his nails are disgusting, whatever - and gets a brief touch of a very soft palm, then a firm callused one shaking his enthusiastically.  
"Do you want us to take that off?" she asks, even as the male kid steps around a bit excitedly. Coma has a feeling she's reaching for his blindfold, and lurches back - there's no need for these nice kids to see _that_.  
"No, love, no." he laughs harshly. "Haven't got any eyes anymore, it's not pretty."  
"You had an operation, like me?" asks the guy, stopping moving for just a moment. He's still hyped up, Coma can, like, sense it in the air, like a sniffer dog versus a... bunny. A bunny on crack.  
"Yeah. Enucleations - cut 'em right out, you know?"  
"Same. I had tumours on my neck- But now they're gone!"  
"And he's going to live!"  
They clutch each other happily, probably grinning their silly heads off, and if Coma had eyes he would be rolling them. An almost imperceptible shake of his head and an exasperated smile gets kind of the same sentiment across, but... Well. It's not the same.  
"Have fun not dying, then, buddy." he shrugs, even as the kid starts laughing again. "It's cool. You can live and do stuff, I know I do." _Come on, Coma. Enthusiasm. Excitement_. "You've got a whole new life ahead of you, uh...?"  
"Nux."  
"A whole new life, Nux!"  
Yeah, that'll do. Weird name too, but whatever. _Coma_ can't really judge.  
"Thanks!" yells Nux, with another hard clap of his hand against Coma's own and, Jesus _fuck_ , what does this kid _do_ for a living? Sure, shredding guitar gives your fingers calluses, but it feels like the kid rubs his hand against sandpaper in his spare time just for kicks, then liberally smears it in grease. Must be a mechanic or something.  
"Thank you!" laughs his girlfriend more gently, with this soft, fleeting touch to Coma's shoulder. He likes her, she's sweet.  
They run off just as suddenly - and fucking loudly - as they arrived, and he sighs heavily. He's totally not a grumpy old man or anything, but he should probably try to get some sleep. Sleep is good. Sleep is good because sleep, combined skilfully with the vodka still in his his bloodstream, means that he won't remember much of this morning. Or last night. Or any moment at all, really; Coma has this great trick of combining tequila and gin and losing track of linear time.  
Without remembering where he is, Coma slumps back down onto the bench and loses consciousness.

*

Capable and Nux, meanwhile, keep on running. This feeling, it's somewhere between euphoria and adrenaline. It's wonderful. All around them are the dark, empty streets that can usually seem threatening, even with the trees everywhere that remind them they're in the Green Place, but the lights from the lamps shine down on them and even if the stars are made scarce by light pollution, the lamps can serve as stars far now and it's magical.  
"I'm going to live!" he howls, grinning, jumping into the air and pulling her with him. They're holding hands like little kids. She grabbed his hand back in the hospital, just before the doctor told them that it the operation was a success and every trace of the cancer was gone from his body. He was lucky, they know. It was very, very localised.  
"You're going to live!" she yells as well, spinning him around. He was wearing a cardigan she brought him when they got the news - what? Nux likes knitwear, ok? He owns about a million wooly hats too - but sometime between then and now he's lost it and he's dressed in just his overly large cargo shorts and the bandages around his shoulder, still ghostly pale and kind of slim, and god he's cute, he's just kind of _Nux_ , with those puppy-dog blue eyes and the scar across his nose, she just loves him-  
"I love you." Capable blurts out, staring at him, and he pauses with that ridiculous bare chest still heaving.  
"Huh? You do?"  
A little overwhelmed, she nods.  
"I love you too!"  
At first, Nux really wasn't too good at kissing. She probably wasn't either, but in fairness she had kissed about a hundred percent more people than him.

Right about now Nux is really, really good at kissing.

And she's going to get to keep kissing him, however much it makes Ace and Max narrow their eyes at him and Toast and Cheedo groan and throw cushions at them. He's going to live.

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from the song 'Reckless Behaviour' by SOAK.


End file.
